


Malta

by AnnaFaie



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25240777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaFaie/pseuds/AnnaFaie
Summary: Joe isn’t sure if he’d ever get tired of this. Of Nicky in the bleary, morning sunlight, splayed half on his stomach and half on Joe, breathing slow and level...
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 21
Kudos: 920





	Malta

Joe isn’t sure if he’d ever get tired of this. Of Nicky in the bleary, morning sunlight, splayed half on his stomach and half on Joe, breathing slow and level. His pale skin is smooth and unmarked by the violence of their long lives, and he looks young, so young. The sight of him still pulls at something deep in Joe’s being, a sweet and painful something he can’t quite pin down. Even after centuries of waking up next to Nicky, soft hair tickling his chest and a cold foot tucked in between his ankles, he feels giddy. 

“Nicolò”, he calls softly. 

Nicky sighs, and burrows his face deeper into Joe’s chest. Joe knows that the only decent way to wake Nicky up is with a cup of fresh espresso, but he doesn’t want to extricate himself from Nicky, doesn’t want to lose the warm glow of the rare morning they don’t need to be anywhere. Malta is cool in early spring, and the warmth of their hotel bed make him want to turn this into a day of lazy kisses and good wine and room service. 

“Amore mio, destati”. 

Nicky shifts, pulls Joe closer and huffs a sigh into his neck. And then, just as Joe is resigned to letting Nicky sleep in, a hand is running down his side, fingertips light, teasing. Nicky’s eyes are still closed, but a sliver of a smile tugs at his lips, and the hardness pressed against Joe’s hip tells him that parts of Nicky, at least, are very much awake. 

“You’re incorrigible”, Joe breathes, the fingers setting his nerve endings alight. 

“Me? It’s you who are incapable of letting me sleep in,” Nicky says quietly, opening his eyes a little. Joe laughs, presses a kiss to the heavy eyelids. 

“I missed you”.

“I’m right here,” Nicky laughs, rolling off Joe and stretching luxuriously. Joe loves him like this, pliant and soft - a Nicky that no-one but him gets to see. “I’ll always be right here”.

Joe leans in to claim Nicky’s mouth, and Nicky lets him part his lips and suck at his tongue. Almost instinctively, lazily, Nicky’s hips roll up to find Joe’s hand, but the pressure is light, and Nicky moans into Joe’s mouth. It’s a sound Joe drinks in like nectar, a desperate, pleading one that makes him feel so powerful and so weak at the same time. 

He remembers the insatiable hunger of their first few times together, the nails digging into his back and the bruises he left on Nicky’s pale skin. They still have that, when adrenaline rages through their veins and death is still fresh on their tongues, when they can but clutch and claw at each other to forget the pain. But this, the gentle morning touches, the unhurried teasing, it’s a rare luxury. It’s sweet and almost, almost, painful in its own way. It’s intimate in a way post-dying sex isn’t, because the air isn’t heavy with the stench of blood and gore and fear, and because Nicky’s green-blue eyes are looking at him like they can see his very soul laid bare. Not that he has much, if anything to hide. Not after all these years.

“What?” Nicky asks, eyes wide and alert now. A flush is creeping up his cheekbones. 

“Do you remember when were were here last?”

“1872, our wedding anniversary. We drank too much wine and scandalised some nuns”.

“You were the one who suggested going for a naked swim”. 

“Lies, it was you”.

“May be, but sex in the water was certainly your idea”.

A little more pressure and Nicky throws his head back, exposing his long neck to Joe’s mouth. Joe loves being able to play Nicky like an instrument, loves how finely tuned to each other’s bodies they are. He knows what Nicky wants, his fingers curling around Nicky’s cock to elicit a half-strangled sob. 

He knows Nicky is just as strong as him, physically - they’ve sparred often enough to establish this. So he relishes this Nicky, the one laid out with heat in his eyes, still sleep-warm, allowing Joe’s fingers to tease him, knowing, trusting that Joe would give him the pleasure he seeks. They don’t have much trust, they e been betrayed much too often, so this, this is precious to both of them. For Nicky, Nicky, who sleeps with a gun under his pillow, to surrender himself is a rare gift indeed. 

Joe takes his time. Ironically, in their line of work, they have little time - at least for this. So he explores Nicky, the taste of his skin exploding on Joe’s tongue, the lithe lines of Nicky’s body like Braille under Joe’s light touches and kisses. A hand on Nicky’s hip keeps him grounded, and his eyes are shut, breathing controlled - he’s lost in his pleasure, flushed and so sensitised that his whole body shudders when Joe presses a finger inside of him. 

“Si,” Nicky whispers, “si, mithlih”. 

Joe marvels at how his hands, so often brutal instruments of violence, can give Nicky such pleasure. Nicky rocks himself onto Joe’s fingers, setting a slow, steady pace, not seeking his orgasm quite yet, an agreement to make this last hanging unspoken between them. It’s a beautiful sight, Joe thinks, taking in the kiss-swollen lips, the curve of Nicky’s back. And Joe can’t resist curling his fingers in a way that makes Nicky shake and curse in a barely coherent cocktail of Arabic and Italian and English. 

“Shh,” he says, and moves so that he is straddling Nicky, hands splayed our on Nicky stomach, Nicky’s heartbeat pounding through his skin. 

Nicky looks at him, open and pleading, as Joe fucks into him with a long exhale, pauses to savour the tight heat. Neither rushes the other, gazes locked in a moment of such honesty that even after millennia, Joe feels terrified of the enormity of this thing between them. Their lips meet, messy and clumsy and unfocused, and Nicky’s legs are wrapped around Joe and are urging him to move.

The rhythm is torturous, steady and slow and deep. Joe can feel Nicky’s urgency building and presses his wrists into the bed, forcing him to slow down, to savour it. There are tears caught in Nicky’s eyeslashes, and Joe kisses them away, tasting salt and Nicky and he buries himself in Nicky’s body. He can barely hold onto the shreds on his self-control, but wrangles with it, wanting to give Nicky every possible ounce of pleasure he can. He pauses, and Nicky whines loudly, wants to say something but his voice breaks. With a shallow inhale, Nicky moves so he’s sitting in Joe’s lap, arms wrapped around Joe’s neck and foreheads pressed together. 

It takes a single, delicious roll of Nicky’s hips for Joe to tense in his arms, his moan caught by Nicky’s mouth, and Nicky follows suit shortly after, until all the tension is gone and they collapse onto the pillows in a tangled heap of limbs and damp hair. Joe caresses Nicky though the afterglow, fingertips running up and down Nicky’s back, both loathe to break the physical contact. It takes minutes for Nicky to roll off Joe with a grimace and a kiss to Joe’s shoulder, and he finds his usual place under Joe’s arm, content and sated and still sex-flushed. 

Soon enough, Nicky’s breathing becomes slow and level again, so Joe pulls him further into their cocoon of blankets and closes his eyes, and for just this one morning allows there to be nothing and no-one else.

**Author's Note:**

> “Amore mio, destati” - “Wake up, my love”. (Italian)
> 
> “Si, si, mithlih” - “Yes, yes, right there”. (Italian/Arabic)


End file.
